Closer Now

It’s moving closer now, moving sly and subtle, a thing you only notice out of the corner of your eye.

Today, for example, I was in the CVS, shopping for my usual lunch of Arizona Iced Tea and a bag of gummy bears. And something felt…off. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I froze in the middle of the hair-care aisle, my senses tingling.

I whirled around, but there was nothing there. My heart started pounding wildly. In that overbright white of the florescents I saw something flash by again in the corner of my eye. I tried to move with it, tried to catch a glimpse, but it was gone again, a whisper in the aether between Worlds.

I pulled out my iPod and switched to the camera app. This time I would be prepared. There again, that darting insect scampering through my periphery. A snapshot, blurry and indistinct:

It took me a moment, but I realized what they were: faces. Horrible faces, melted, shifting forms that did not describe the likeness of any creature alive, but only those things that lurked in the imaginations of the damned.

And then, while I still processed the images on my iPod, I heard a scuttling from behind. Again I spun in place and clicked the shutter button with no regard for framing or focusing. What I captured chilled me to my bones, for I now knew what was coming. 

It grins from the top shelf of the gum section.

Halloween is coming.

Dylan Charles